


In a Different Soil

by trascendenza



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Female Protagonist, Gen, POV Female Character, Succubi & Incubi, Women Being Awesome, layers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-26
Updated: 2010-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The choices she makes. <em>If she had to live with mortals every second of every day there's no telling what she'd do.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Different Soil

It was a mildly rainy day -- highs in the 60s, lows in the 40s, high probability that the front would stay through the weekend -- when Roxy Wasserman looked at the swatch of fabric in front of her and realized she was the universe's foremost expert on the the biologically-ingrained (pseudo)sexual-homicidal compulsion.

It was one of the rare instances in her life when her pleasure was equally mixed with displeasure.

"Get this _out of my sight_!" She roared, throwing the book to the floor. She felt the power rush into her eyes, her extremities, just below her skin: were she a different woman, she would have sliced open and drunk from the next neck unfortunate enough to cross her path. Luckily for her staff on this particular mildly rainy day, they all had very fortunate necks, and the sniveling minion that crawled on all fours to retrieve the book certainly wasn't worth that sort of effort.

That was the litany that got her through the day, at any rate.

*

_**Middleman's (Paper Backup) Glossary of Very Useful Terms.** _

__**Index C:** All Manner of Soul-and-Lifeforce Sucking Beings.  
**Section V:** Who May or May Not Show You a Good Time Before the End.  
**Sub-Section 4:** Succubi and Incubi.

_**biologically-ingrained (pseudo)sexual impulse.** All cubi demons, to date, have recounted firsthand that they suffer from a biological compulsion to seek out seduction scenarios that end in death of the seduced. They lift the soul wholesale from the body just at the threshold of death when the ineffable force of animation is attempting to transit from this plane to another. The ineffable force of animation, being ineffable, apparently provides them with a great sense of euphoria, strength, well-being, and a "rush" that can last for weeks, sometimes months if a cubi manages to snatch a very well-aged specimen of ineffability._

_The parenthitized use of "pseudo" is intended to capture the subtle differentiation of the compulsion, as it is not sexual in all cases. A cubi demon's decision to go through with the deed or not is strictly a matter of individual preference, and though the common derogatory term "nymphodemaniac" litters the underworld like the detritus that lines the highways of the middleworld, it is inaccurate and misleading in its connotations. The only common factor between all cubi is the compulsion: beyond that, take each as an individual case._

_Cubi can choose to go dry and abstain from the sucking of souls which generally, in turn, results in a cessation of sexual activity as such activity is considered a gateway. Though it may fade, the compulsion itself never leaves. It is Official Middle Policy (see Official Middle Policy Manual, Chapter 10, Section C, Subsection III: "The Official Middle Policy Regarding Cubi Demons Abstaining from the Sucking of Souls") to encourage and support all dry cubi demons when the resources are available. Theirs is a noble task._

*

She felt an extreme fondness for MM, which she supposed tapped into that ancient sense of irony coded into the hardwiring of every organism that walked, crawled, oozed, or floated on the surface of the middleworld. For every thing, an opposite; for every action, a reaction. But she doubted that an existence such as hers, depraved and wondrous though it was, could account for such a beacon of extreme wholesomeness.

In their younger days, they'd stayed up until 4AM in the hovel she'd tried to pass off as an office discussing neoclassicist critiques of demonic etiquette, the efficacy of soda water at removing stains of any sort, and the nature of all the worlds from top to bottom to middle. There would be a bottle of wine between them that inevitably ended up stained only with her lipstick around the rim; MM's eyes began to droop well before the witching hour. She suspected it was through their acquaintance that he'd learned to subtly redirect his yawns through his nose; she never told him she caught on, if just because she loved to see the expression of intense concentration on his face that gave him away every time.

 _You would have been killed before your first breath if you were born into my pool,_ she told him, laughing her seduction laugh, because he was immune to such light lures and that was a freedom in itself.

 _My mother would have had some stern words about your manners,_ he replied, smiling his innocent smile, which still tempted her from time to time, but only in the most peripheral way. Well-aged or not, he was the first human she considered inherently more valuable alive.

Back then, she would watch him and think how effortless it must be, not to have to hold back every single second of every single day of every single choice.

*

_**Middleman (Video Tape Backups) of Very Useful Interviews.** _

_Roxy Wasserman: Of course it's not_ easy _, but it's not really as difficult as all that, either. Everyone wants melodrama, and here I am, fresh out. [sighs] See, here's the thing: I'm a legal permanent resident of the middleworld. This is how I've chosen to adjust to it. Does that mean that I regret what I've done? The better question is: do I even_ understand _how to regret what I've done? Because the answer to that is no. I don't. When you come from a place where every single day of your life you make the choice between killing one of your poolmates or being killed, those sorts of definitions serve absolutely no use. I've never had_ time _for useless things._

*

As their older days progressed, MM always left by his prescribed bedtime and Roxy would prop her feet on her desk, staring at the wall long after he was gone. Sometimes they shared plates of strawberries or stories of the old days, which were always better than the days to come.

She wondered if it was a sign that she was wiser, now, to see that he deserved her pity as much as her envy. A Middleman living in a middleworld that created him from its need for order, yet couldn't live up to its own ideals; he was just as out of place as she was, two extremes on the same spectrum. Every day, he walked through a reality rife with cursing, lying, stealing, cheating, killing, and every day he fought against it, as if a bandaid could could stem the flow from an amputation, as if a dam of toothpicks could hold back a flood.

*

_**Middleman (Digitized Backups) of Very Useful Periodicals.** _

_**Demonology Weekly, Volume III, Issue II.** _

**_The Biologically-Ingrained (Pseudo)sexual-Homicidal Compulsion, by Roxy Wasserman._ **

_[Excerpt.]_

_Dear so-called demonologist experts who think that you know the first thing about the cubi experience: I am here to disabuse you of that notion._

_**i)** My power to seduce you is absolute. There has not been a ward, shield, or remedy that has ever been successful, and the second that you think about creating a weapon to target us, the cubi will find you and destroy you._

_Go on, you can take a few minutes to let that one sink in. I'm not going anywhere._

_**ii)** Using the terms "hunger" or "insatiable need" to describe the cubi compulsion is moronic, sensationalistic, and inaccurate to the point of senselessness. I suspect these are the words you use to comfort yourselves, to make you feel safer when you're lying in bed at 3AM wondering what that creak in your kitchen was, whether your ending has come to find you, as you're praying you'll have another few hours, days, weeks, months to continue eking out a miserable existence._

_**iii)** It is neither my job nor desire to explain cubi morality to you, but I will say this: every act of refraining is a choice that feels unbelievably wrong. This is the price some of us pay to coexist in the middleworld. We do not do this for you._

_**iv)** For every dry cubi demon, there are ten who will never go dry._

_**v)** For every cubi demon in existence, there are a hundred humans who kill just as freely. I have yet to meet a human who can explain this to my satisfaction. That is not an invitation to try._

_**vi)** The (pseudo)sexual homicidal compulsion is -- and always will be -- entirely beyond your understanding. Accept this and move on with your life. Stop trying to call me for interviews. Don't take it as a good sign that I don't kill you on sight -- there are far worse fates than death._

*

This is what they don't talk about at support meetings: how _right_ it feels, in a way that they could never explain to humans or any other species, period. They don't need to talk about it, because this rightness is like the slope of a shoulder or the curve of a knuckle, a simple fact of their makeup, nothing that's even possible to articulate.

This feeling never fades -- not after days, weeks, months, years, decades of being dry. It is always there, the space filling up the room between the homemade chocolate chip cookies that MM brings every time he's not too busy trying to build his toothpick dams, it is there beneath their weekly affirmations, _we choose and we choose again not to kill_ , it is there every time Roxy looks at a mortal life and thinks: it could have been mine. It should have been.

She created a cubi sanctuary not out of any goodness of her heart: she needed them as much as they needed her. If she had to live with mortals every second of every day there's no telling what she'd do. There's no telling whether she'd one day end up at the other end of one of MM's barrels, whether she would one day press her fingertips into the skin of his neck and feel the entirety of him sink into her. There's no telling what the right choice is in any of these situations, because what she once knew as right has completely abandoned her in this upside-down middleworld where _rightness_ becomes _wrongness_ and everything in between gets skewed.

They don't need to talk about it at the meetings because it is the bedrock upon which they stand. They may as well talk about the sky or the ground or the ubiquity of prepositions ending sentences in American English. It wasn't as if they had the power to change any of these things.

*

"Why, MM," she said, running her fingers along the collar of his jacket and smiling her seduction smile to (almost) no effect, "what brings you to my office?"

MM's hands rested loosely at the base of his stomach, his posture straight, and he spoke with the interesting combination of breathless but very precise politeness unique to him. "A gargantuan homunculus is running amok downtown and we were hoping you could brew us up a demolecularization potion that would melt the tiny-featured giant down to his base elements."

"We may be able to find a way to fertilize some plants with him when we're done," the MM-to-be offered, as if this were the sort of information that was pertinent. Roxy ignored her.

"A gargantuan homunculus?" Roxy said, pursing her lips and considering. "I do so love a contradiction in terms. Step into my office."

"Much obliged," MM said, giving her a half-bow from his waist.

"Really," Roxy said, the tendrils of seduction curling deep in the pit of her stomach. "You have no idea."


End file.
